Let me introduce you to the work and thinking of Ronald Brownstein (depicted on the right, click for full set).

Since the comparatively more earnest and open days of his Twisty youth, Mr. Ronald Brownstein has amassed an impressive array of accolades, not least among which two (that's right, not just one but two!) participations at the Pulizer Prize Ball, in his entertainer capacity. Donning a well made, wholly polyester Ronald McDonald costume, Mr. Brownstein has entertained guests and innocent bystanders alike with his endless supply of zany antics as well as seemingly unlimited appetite for platters upon platers of catered rubber coq. Enfin.

We will peruse today his most recent contribution to the liberal arts. It comes in the dubious shape of the printed designs upon a widely used brand of wrapping paper you might be familiar with if you live in Podunk, Ohio : the National Journal. Prepare your doggy bags.

When congressional insiders say John Boehner could lose his speakership if he moves to end the confrontations over the federal budget and debt ceiling, it provokes an obvious question: How could he tell?

This is pretty much a certainty, at this point.

Embattled throughout his nearly three-year tenure, Boehner has never seemed more a SINO—that's Speaker In Name Only—than during this crisis. He's allowed the House Republicans' most conservative members to repeatedly escalate the confrontation despite his doubts about their strategy, if that word applies.

Yes, the word applies. To be perfectly clear, nobody is allowed to confront Congress. This is the point and the whole raison d'etre of a Congress. Consequently, anyone in there not escalating the confrontation is not doing their job.

At times lately, Boehner has hinted he might isolate the Right by building a coalition of Democrats and more pragmatic Republicans before allowing the federal government to default on its debts. But, so far, he's effectively thrown up his hands and surrendered the wheel to the Right's insatiable demand for collision.

Those hints were so very fine it'd take a more deluded Democrat to have distinguished them.

It's another question whether anyone else could have done better at taming the unruly passion of the tea-party-allied caucus in both chambers that has goaded the GOP into this brawl. One lesson of the grueling standoff, as I noted recently, is that when Congress devolves into perpetual conflict, each party's more militant voices gain influence at the expense of its deal-makers.

Leaving aside the inappropriate use of epithets in a mostly doomed attempt to "frame the issue", offense for which Mr. Ronald "McDonald" Brownstein has already been punished in this article, there's a problem of logic at work here, commonly known as "post hoc ergo propter hoc" by those with an actual education in the Classics. Specifically, it may be the case, and it likely is the case, that the same underlying cause that results in "perpetual conflict" is also the direct reason for millitant voices gaining influence, which point of fact renders the clown's observation moot. Certainly no "lesson".

That dynamic is evident in a Democratic Party that has coalesced around a hard-line, no-negotiations strategy meant to lastingly delegitimize threats of government shutdown or default as a lever for exacting policy concessions. "We have to break the cycle of this, and it has to happen now," insists one senior White House aide.

Another way to phrase the same underlying reality would be to say that "one senior WH aide" observed that "we barely have enough loot to satisfy the people we're employing at stealing it in the first place, it's out of the question we might share anything." Otherwise, the entire point of the Congress is to use the strings of the purse not to "extract concessions", but quite to direct, in its grand lines and in any details it sees fit, all the policy of the United States, starting with the President's.

That's the point libertard prostitutes seem to carelessly neglect for some reason. The President does not go through elections to win this job where he may do as he pleases, this isn't the acclamation of a new Emperor. The President goes through elections to win the job of a Congressional slave, doing what they tell him to do, to the degree they tell him to do it. That's the Presidency, for the record.

That dynamic is evident in a Democratic Party that has coalesced around a hard-line, no-negotiations strategy meant to lastingly delegitimize threats of government shutdown or default as a lever for exacting policy concessions. "We have to break the cycle of this, and it has to happen now," insists one senior White House aide.

Yes, it is often the case that a strike arranged by the Mob is a lot neater, and even has much better drawn posters, than an actual strike organised by the actual workers. Surprisingly, the situation carries : the representatives of "let's steal from the tax chest" party that got their job through their boss putting their names down on the list are a lot more malleable than the representatives of the "Jesus God they're killing us!" party, who got their job through actually representing actual people, that actually exist and actually matter.

The reason the most confrontational congressional Republicans have seized the party's controls is that they are most directly channeling the bottomless alienation coursing through much of the GOP's base. That doesn't mean Republican voters have broadly endorsed the party's specific tactics: In this week's United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll, even GOP voters split fairly closely on the wisdom of seeking concessions on President Obama's health care law through the debt and spending showdowns (while almost every other group preponderantly opposed that idea).

I would like to see the data on what "almost every other group" says, and what groups they be and everything. Because this seems a pretty clear cut case of DC echo chamber and 80% of all statistics. On the actual ground, Republican voters have not only broadly endorsed the party's tactics, but more importantly are the people pushing for the end goals. Even more importantly, their support for their party is politically legitimate : they are voters. The support for the opposition is politically illegitimate : they aren't voters, they're clients. They're people who expect to be handed some chunk of other people's money, property and future in exchange for voting Democrat. That's not an electorate, it's a mob, and it needn't have a voice. At all.

But the kamikaze caucus, by seeking to block the president by any means necessary, is reflecting the back-to-the wall desperation evident among grassroots Republicans convinced that Obama and his urbanized, racially diverse supporters are transforming America into something unrecognizable. Although those voters are split over whether the current tactics will work, they are united in resisting any accommodation with Obama.

We will have to stop reading here. At the lowest of the low, with the entire Prostitextuation Establishment railing, the feebleminded Bush managed a 36% approval rating. Currently, in spite of the ridiculous downpour coming from all the DC clowns available, Obama is pushing 37%. And yet he pronounces nuclear correctly! That's gotta be worth a percent at the very least, don't you think so ?

Moreover, the perpetually-on-welfare, illegal immigrants and all the rest of the "low information voter" scum is urbanized now ? In what alternate universe is this going on ? What Obama supporters are we talking about here, they don't exist either quantitatiely or qualitatively. They just aren't there. The only way the man can line up five people that won't cuss him out on sight is if he either pays five people by the hour or otherwise has the Department of Human Cattle pick up five heads of livestock from its pens.

Honestly, I hope the deluded Democrats don't yield, so they have to be butchered ; so having signed stuff like the quoted article will be retroactively defined as a crime. Because quite frankly a simple apology from the professional tax-chest breakers isn't going to be sufficiently satisfying. Heads have to roll. Obama being impeached is not sufficient, Obama has to be executed, and publicly at that, with due process and soaped rope. Ronald Brownstein penning a long apologetic piece in whatever unread magazine for the shameless felony of having supported the Democrat agenda in 2013 is not good enough. He has to serve time in prison. Capitulation is no good, and I would hope the socialist camp doesn't chicken out and fold at the last minute.

So... you know, bring it. The harder you fight, the more decidedly you make this your last stand, the more satisfying the end of it will be. At least from my point of view.

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[...] of imaginary money ; making "soldiers" out of cowardly capons through liberal application of Pulizer prostitutes ; making progress out of crumbling infrastructure and "changing the world" with two shitsticks and [...]

[...] of imaginary money ; making "soldiers" out of cowardly capons through liberal application of Pulizer prostitutes ; making progress out of crumbling infrastructure and "changing the world" with two shitsticks and [...]

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